Howlin' Wolf

Chester Arthur Burnett was born on June 10, 1910 in White Station, Mississippi, near West Point, he was named after Chester A. Arthur, the 21st President of the United States, and was nicknamed Big Foot Chester and Bull Cow in his early years because of his massive size at 6 feet, 6 inches (198 cm) and close to 300 pounds (136 kg). He explained the origin of the name Howlin' Wolf thus: "I got that from my grandfather (John Jones)." His Grandfather would often tell him stories about the wolves in that part of the country and warn him that if he misbehaved, the howling wolves would "get him".

Little Walter | Blues Harp Master

Little Walter or Marion Walter Jacobs was an American blues harmonica player who born in Marksville, Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana on May 1, 1930 and raised in Alexandria, Louisiana, where he first learned to play the harmonica whose revolutionary approach to his instrument has earned him comparisons to Charlie Parker and Jimi Hendrix for innovation and impact on succeeding generations. His virtuosity and musical innovations fundamentally altered many listeners' expectations of what was possible on blues harmonica. Little Walter was inducted to the The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008 making him the first and only artist ever to be inducted specifically for his work as a harmonica player.

Charlie Musselwhite

Charles Douglas Musselwhite was born in Kosciusko, Mississippi, United States on January 31, 1944. 

He has said that he is of Choctaw descent, and he was born in a region originally inhabited by the Choctaw. However, in a 2005 interview, he said his mother had told him he was actually Cherokee. His family considered it normal to play music, with his father playing guitar and harmonica, his mother playing piano, and a relative who was a one-man band. 

At the age of three, Musselwhite moved to Memphis, Tennessee. 

When he was a teenager, Memphis experienced the period when rockabilly, western swing, and electric blues and other forms of African American music were combining to give birth to rock and roll.

Curtis Salgado

Curtis Salgado born on February 4, 1954 in Everett, Washington. His family moved to Eugene, Oregon when he was one and he grew up there listening to jazz, and to his father, an aspiring singer of classical music. 

His ambitions coalesced when, at age 12, he saw Count Basie’s band perform in Eugene. Curtis became a part of the burgeoning Northwest blues scene starting in 1972 with a band called Three-Fingered Jack. 

Eventually he hooked up with up-and-coming guitarist/vocalist Robert Cray, and recorded the album “Who’s Been Talking.” 

Big Mama Thornton

Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton was born December 11, 1926 on the rural outskirts of Montgomery, Alabama. She was one of six siblings. Her father was a minister and her mother sang in the church choir. Willie Mae grew up singing in church and learned drums and harmonica, perhaps from a brother who was an outstanding player, later known as "Harp" Thornton.

Thornton left Montgomery at age 14 in 1941, following her mother's death. She joined Sammy Green's Georgia-based Hot Harlem Revue. Her seven-year tenure with them gave her valuable singing and stage experience, and enabled her to tour the South. In 1948, she settled in Houston, Texas, where she hoped to further her career as a singer. She was also a self-taught drummer and harmonica player, and frequently played each instrument onstage.

James Cotton

Born on the first day of July, 1935, in Tunica, Mississippi. He is an American blues harmonica player, singer, and songwriter who is the bandleader for the James Cotton Blues Band. He also writes songs alone, and his solo career continues to this day. His work includes the following genres: blues, delta blues, harmonica blues, and electric harmonica blues.

He was the youngest of eight brothers and sisters who grew up in the cotton fields working beside their mother, Hattie, and their father, Mose. On Sundays Mose was the preacher in the area's Baptist church. Cotton's earliest memories include his mother playing chicken and train sounds on her harmonica and for a few years he thought those were the only two sounds the little instrument made. His Christmas present one year was a harmonica, it cost 15 cents, and it wasn't long before he mastered the chicken and the train. King Biscuit Time, a 15-minute radio show, began broadcasting live on KFFA, a station just across the Mississippi River in Helena, Arkansas. The star of the show was the harmonica legend, Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller). The young Cotton pressed his little ear to the old radio speaker.

Big Walter "Shakey" Horton

Walter Horton better known as Big Walter Horton or Walter "Shakey" Horton born on April 6, 1917 in Horn Lake, Mississippi, but his mother soon moved to Memphis Tennessee where Walter taught himself how to play the harmonica at five years of age and claimed that his earliest recordings were done there in the late 1920s with the Memphis Jug Band, although there is no documentation of it, and some blues researchers have stated that this story was most likely fabricated by Horton. (He also claimed to have taught some harmonica to Little Walter and the original Sonny Boy Williamson, although these claims are unsubstantiated, and in the case of the older Williamson, somewhat suspect).

John Mayall

John Mayall, OBE (born 29 November 1933) in Macclesfield, is a pioneering English blues singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. His musical career spans over fifty years, but the most notable episode in it occurred during the late '60s. The eldest of three from humble working class origins, and in the shadow of WWII, this skinny English lad grew up listening to his guitarist father's extensive jazz record collection and felt drawn to the blues. Strongly influenced by such greats as Leadbelly, Albert Ammons, Pinetop Smith, and Eddie Lang, from the age of 13 he taught himself to play and develop his own style with the aid of a neighbor's piano, borrowed guitars, and secondhand harmonicas.

Sonny Terry

Terry was born in Greensboro, North Carolina. His father, a farmer, taught him to play basic blues harp as a youth. He sustained injuries to his eyes and lost his sight by the time he was 16, which prevented him from doing farm work himself. In order to earn a living Terry was forced to play music. He began playing in Shelby, North Carolina. After his father died he began playing in the trio of Piedmont blues-style guitarist Blind Boy Fuller. When Fuller died in 1941, he established a long-standing musical relationship with Brownie McGhee, and the pair recorded numerous songs together. The duo became well-known among white audiences, as they joined the growing folk movement of the 1950s and 1960s. This included collaborations with Styve Homnick, Woody Guthrie and Moses Asch, producing Folkways Records (now Smithsonian/Folkways) classic recordings.

In 1938 Terry was invited to play at Carnegie Hall for the first From Spirituals to Swing concert, and later that year he recorded for the Library of Congress. In 1940 Terry recorded his first commercial sides.

Sonny Boy Williamson II

He was born as Aleck Ford on the Sara Jones Plantation in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, his date and year of birth are a matter of uncertainty. He claimed to have been born on December 5, 1899, but one researcher, David Evans, claims to have found census record evidence that he was born around 1912. His gravestone lists his date of birth as March 11, 1908

Aleck "Rice" Miller was an African American blues harmonica player, singer and songwriter.  He was also known as Sonny Boy Williamson II, Willie Williamson, Willie Miller, Little Boy Blue, The Goat and Footsie.

Harmonica Shah

Born in California, Shah also spent time in Somerville, Texas, with his blues harmonica and guitar playing grandfather, Sam Dawson. 

Dawson had recorded for both Alan Lomax and Duke Records. 

His mother, a beautician, organised for him to be a salesman for Jet magazine in the latter part of the 1950s. 

This allowed Shah access to Oakland's bars and clubs, where he heard musicians such as Lowell Fulson, Jimmy McCracklin, Juke Boy Bonner and Big Mama Thornton. 

Sonny Boy Williamson - Keep It To Yourself

Check Up On My Baby - Sonny Boy Williamson

I've got to check up on my baby, yeah
I've got to see how my baby been gettin along
But I've got to go an check up on my baby
I've got to see how my baby been gettin 'long
Now an I'm goin an fightin' now for our country
We gotta keep Mussolini from treatin' my baby wrong

'Mussolini got scared an cut out, didn't he?'

Now, don't ya know what Hitler told President Roosevelt?
Said we made the bad design plan, worry on
Oh President Roosevelt, I think they're tellin' a lie
Brother, so we gotta have a plan that's built up like a squirrel
An I'll send my boys to check up on their baby, yeah

A-my boys must see how there baby doin', gettin' along
He said, 'You help me win this war
Gotta keep Hitler from treatin' yo' baby wrong